How well can we predict educational outcomes? Examining the roles of cognitive ability and social position in educational attainment

(2016) - Tim Morris, Danny Dorling, George Davey Smith

Journal: Contemporary Social Science
Link:: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21582041.2016.1138502
DOI:: 10.1080/21582041.2016.1138502
Links::
Tags:: #paper #SocialClass #Attainment #CognitiveAbility #LifeCourse #Education
Cite Key:: [@Morris2016]

Abstract

Social inequalities in UK educational outcomes continue to persist despite improvements in recent years. However, studies that examine these inequalities fail to account for differences in prior cognitive ability. We seek to determine the influence of cognitive ability on educational outcomes and the extent of socio-economic disparities in education across a wide range of indicators while accounting for cognitive ability. Social inequalities exist whereby children from disadvantaged backgrounds systematically underperform compared to their advantaged peers regardless of cognitive ability; high ability children from disadvantaged backgrounds are disproportionately less likely to attain good grades compared to children from advantaged backgrounds. In addition, school effects operate to add to this inequality as children in fee-paying secondary schools outperform their state secondary school counterparts regardless of ability. Future UK policies should focus on reducing social inequality in education to ensure that all children are offered the same life chances regardless of background.

Notes

“Social inequalities exist whereby children from disadvantaged backgrounds systematically underperform compared to their advantaged peers regardless of cognitive ability; high ability children from disadvantaged backgrounds are disproportionately less likely to attain good grades compared to children from advantaged backgrounds. In addition, school effects operate to add to this inequality as children in fee-paying secondary schools outperform their state secondary school counterparts regardless of ability.” (Morris et al., 2016, p. 154)

“n the UK children from family backgrounds characterised by high socio-economic position (SEP) outperform their lower SEP counterparts (Bynner & Joshi, 2002).” (Morris et al., 2016, p. 154)

“In addition to these social processes, academic attainment is also known to be heavily influenced by genetic and biological factors (Davies, Hermani, Timpson, Windmeijer, & Davey Smith, 2015).” (Morris et al., 2016, p. 155)

“Despite a large body of evidence of the genetic/biological influences on educational attainment there is also strong evidence that outcomes are environmentally (i.e. socially) contingent (Branigan, McCallum, & Freese, 2013).” (Morris et al., 2016, p. 155)

“Work has been conducted on previous UK cohorts born in 1958 (Feinstein, 2000) and 1970 (Feinstein, 2003) demonstrating socio-economic inequalities in educational attainment but these findings are based on cohorts that passed through school three to four decades ago at a time when UK social inequalities were far different to those today (Dorling, 2015b).” (Morris et al., 2016, p. 156)